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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood'
Dont Lets go to the Dogs Tonight is a wonderfully evocative memoir of Alexandra Fullers African childhood. Fuller regards herself "as a daughter of Africa", who spent her early life on farms in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia throughout the turbulent 1970s and 80s, as her parents "fought to keep one country in Africa white-run", but "lost twice" in Kenya and Zimbabwe. This is a profoundly personal story about growing up with a pair of funny, tough, white African settlers, and living with their "sometimes breathlessly illogical decisions", as they move from war-torn Zimbabwe to disease and malnutrition in Malawi, and finally the "beautiful and fertile" land of Zambia.
Central to Fullers book is the intense relations between herself and her parents, a chain-smoking father able to turn round any farm in Africa, her glamorous older sister Vanessa, and the character who sits at the heart of the book, Fullers "fiercely intelligent, deeply compassionate, surprisingly witty and terrifyingly mad" mother.
Fuller weaves together painful family tragedy with a wider understanding of the ambivalence of being part of a separatist white farming community in the midst of Black African independence. The majority of the book focuses on Fullers early years in war-torn Zimbabwe, with "more history stuffed into its make-believe, colonial-dream borders than one country the size of a very large teapot should be able to amass." This is the most successful dimension of the book, as Fuller describes growing up on farm where her father is away most nights fighting "terrorists", and stripping a rifle takes precedence over school lessons. The sections on Malawi and Zambia are more prosaic, but this is a lyrical and accomplished memoir about Africa, which is "about adjusting to a new world view" and the authors "passionate love for a continent that has come to define, shape, scar and heal me and my family." --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Corazon De Las Tinieblas'
Esta es la novela en la que Francis Ford Coppola se basó para escribir Apocalypse Now. Marlow, agente comercial británico, se ve obligado a remontar el rÃo Congo en busca de su compañero Kurtz. A medida que el barco avance por territorios cada vez más inhóspitos, Marlow se irá construyendo una imagen mitificada de Kurtz. En realidad, encontrará un mundo apocalÃptico y tenebroso, gobernado por un cÃnico que simboliza la degradación moral y las contradicciones de un hombre ante la fuerza indómita de la naturaleza. / Woven around a minimal plot Marlows trip on the Congo river to replace Kurtz, a commercial agent who is gravelly ill Heart of Darkness is a tense moral reflection about solitude and mans struggle against the uncontainable forces of nature. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) introduces the reader to a hallucinating world where the darkness of the African jungle and the eeriness of forgotten instincts merge, creating a trap of annihilating power to which the characters will ultimately submit. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heart of Darkness'
Introduction and Notes by Gene M. Moore, Universiteit van Amsterdam Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the 19th century, the story deals with the highly disturbing effects of economic, social and political exploitation of European and African societies and the cataclysmic behaviour this induced in some individuals. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness'
If asked to describe the way in which the study of literature is changing, most of us willing to venture an answer would say that it is becoming more theortical. Without some kind of theoretical underpinning, literary criticism runs the riskof being impressionistic, even illogical [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diary'
Introduction by Caryl PhillipsCommentary by H. L. Mencken, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chinua Achebe, and Philip GourevitchOriginally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890-the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad: "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . . He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness and Other Tales'
Set in an atmosphere of mystery, this novel tells of Marlow's journey up the Congo River to meet the remarkable Mr Kurtz. The other three tales also appraise the glamour and rapacity of imperial adventure and display insights into human nature and the bases of civilization. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart Of Darkness And Selected Short Fiction'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer'
Heart Of Darkness. The story of the civilized, enlightened Mr. Kurtz who embarks on a harrowing "night journey" into the savage heart of Africa, only to find his dark and evil soul. The Secret Sharer. The saga of a young, inexperienced skipper forced to decide the fate of a fugitive sailor who killed a man in self-defense. As he faces his first moral test the skipper discovers a terrifying truth -- and comes face to face with the secret itself. Heart Of Darkness and The Secret Sharer draw on actual events and people that Conrad met or heard about during his many far-flung travels. In portraying men whose incredible journeys on land and at sea are also symbolic voyages into their own mysterious depths, these two masterful works give credence to Conrad's acclaim as a major psychological writer. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Illustrated Out of Africa'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kalahari Typing School For Men'
The fourth novel in The No.1 Ladies' Dectective Agency series [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa'
King Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam Hochschild in this grim history, did not much care for his native land or his subjects, all of which he dismissed as "small country, small people." Even so, he searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other European powers for overseas dominions in Africa and Asia would leave nothing for himself or his people. When he eventually found a suitable location in what would become the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and now simply as Congo, Leopold set about establishing a rule of terror that would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people, "a death toll," Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust dimensions." Those who survived went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber, yielding a fortune for the Belgian king, who salted away billions of dollars in hidden bank accounts throughout the world. Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Letters from Africa, 1914-1931'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Morality For Beautiful Girls'
THE NO.1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY published in 1998, introduced the world to the one and only Precious Ramotswe, the engaging and sassy owner of Botswana's only detective agency. TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE took us further into this world, and now, continuing the adventures of Mma Ramotswe, MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, finds her expanding her business to take in the world of car repair and a beauty pageant. Alexander McCall Smith's sense of humour and gentle charm have created a substantial cult following. MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS will win him yet more fans. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'
Penzler Pick, July 2001: Working in a mystery tradition that will cause genre aficionados to think of such classic sleuths as Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner or Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee, Alexander McCall Smith creates an African detective, Precious Ramotswe, who's their full-fledged heir.
It's the detective as folk hero, solving crimes through an innate, self-possessed wisdom that, combined with an understanding of human nature, invariably penetrates into the heart of a puzzle. If Miss Marple were fat and jolly and lived in Botswana--and decided to go against any conventional notion of what an unmarried woman should do, spending the money she got from selling her late father's cattle to set up a Ladies' Detective Agency--then you have an idea of how Precious sets herself up as her country's first female detective. Once the clients start showing up on her doorstep, Precious enjoys a pleasingly successful series of cases.
But the edge of the Kalahari is not St. Mary Mead, and the sign Precious orders, painted in brilliant colors, is anything but discreet. Pointing in the direction of the small building she had purchased to house her new business, it reads "THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY. FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT."
The solutions she comes up with, whether in the case of the clinic doctor with two quite different personalities (depending on the day of the week), or the man who had joined a Christian sect and seemingly vanished, or the kidnapped boy whose bones may or may not be those in a witch doctor's magic kit, are all sensible, logical, and satisfying. Smith's gently ironic tone is full of good humor towards his lively, intelligent heroine and towards her fellow Africans, who live their lives with dignity and with cautious acceptance of the confusions to which the world submits them. Precious Ramotswe is a remarkable creation, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency well deserves the praise it received from London's Times Literary Supplement. I look forward with great eagerness to the upcoming books featuring the memorable Miss Ramotswe, Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls, soon to be available in the U.S. --Otto Penzler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'
Penzler Pick, July 2001: Working in a mystery tradition that will cause genre aficionados to think of such classic sleuths as Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner or Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee, Alexander McCall Smith creates an African detective, Precious Ramotswe, who's their full-fledged heir.
It's the detective as folk hero, solving crimes through an innate, self-possessed wisdom that, combined with an understanding of human nature, invariably penetrates into the heart of a puzzle. If Miss Marple were fat and jolly and lived in Botswana--and decided to go against any conventional notion of what an unmarried woman should do, spending the money she got from selling her late father's cattle to set up a Ladies' Detective Agency--then you have an idea of how Precious sets herself up as her country's first female detective. Once the clients start showing up on her doorstep, Precious enjoys a pleasingly successful series of cases.
But the edge of the Kalahari is not St. Mary Mead, and the sign Precious orders, painted in brilliant colors, is anything but discreet. Pointing in the direction of the small building she had purchased to house her new business, it reads "THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY. FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT."
The solutions she comes up with, whether in the case of the clinic doctor with two quite different personalities (depending on the day of the week), or the man who had joined a Christian sect and seemingly vanished, or the kidnapped boy whose bones may or may not be those in a witch doctor's magic kit, are all sensible, logical, and satisfying. Smith's gently ironic tone is full of good humor towards his lively, intelligent heroine and towards her fellow Africans, who live their lives with dignity and with cautious acceptance of the confusions to which the world submits them. Precious Ramotswe is a remarkable creation, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency well deserves the praise it received from London's Times Literary Supplement. I look forward with great eagerness to the upcoming books featuring the memorable Miss Ramotswe, Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls, soon to be available in the U.S. --Otto Penzler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Out of Africa'
This is an illustrated memoir of Karen Blixen's life in Kenya, where she ran a coffee plantation at Ngong, initially with her husband until their divorce in 1921, and then on her own until the collapse of the coffee market in 1931. Fully illustrated with contemporary paintings and photographs as well as drawings by a present-day Kenyan artist, the book is a portrait of day to day life on a struggling coffee plantation, eccentric European settlers, the Africans and the beauty and wildness of the land. "Out of Africa" was released as a feature film in 1985, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford and directed by Sydney Pollack. Other works by Karen Blixen published under her pen name Isak Dinesen include "Seven Gothic Tales", "The Angelic Avengers", "Winter's Tales", "Anecdotes of Destiny", "Shadows on the Grass", "Ehrengard" and a collection of her letters, "Letters from Africa". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass'
With classic simplicity and a painter's feeling for atmosphere and detail, Isak Dinesen tells of the years she spent from 1914 to 1931 managing a coffee plantation in Kenya. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poisonwood Bible'
Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?
In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.
The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.
Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tears of the Giraffe'
THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY - Book 2
Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, the basis of the HBO TV show, and its proprietor Precious Ramotswe, Botswanas premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, and good humornot to mention help from her loyal assistant, Grace Makutsi, and the occasional cup of tea.
Precious Ramotswe is the eminently sensible and cunning proprietor of the only ladies detective agency in Botswana. In Tears of the Giraffe she tracks a wayward wife, uncovers an unscrupulous maid, and searches for an American man who disappeared into the plains many years ago. In the midst of resolving uncertainties, pondering her impending marriage to a good, kind man, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and the promotion of her talented secretary (a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College, with a mark of 97 per cent), she also finds her family suddenly and unexpectedly increased by two. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Things Fall Apart'
Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Things Fall Apart'
The unthinkable happens when nuclear brinksmanship spirals off into to Armageddon. Billions die as governments disintegrate, great cities are annihilated and deeply laid plans to seize unlimited power swing into action.Tom McArthur: Once a carefree individualist, he was coaxed into a position of influence and leadership by unexpected opportunity and kept there by his sense of honor. He finds himself far from home and family, separated by hundreds of miles of impossible terrain, gangs of armed bandits and a hostile government.Lynn, his wife: Beautiful and intelligent, strong willed and voluptuous, she resents Tom's abandonment of her and their children for a distant political career. Now, with nothing but her courage, wits and willpower to work with, she must fight to keep herself and her children alive.Lance: Young, handsome and lonely, trained as the ultimate warrior, he drove himself into poverty and alcohol with the memory of an unspeakable evil he was party to. Will he find love and redemption or destroy those around him? Who will live? Who will die? What will emerge when things fall apart? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda'
"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.
The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Biblia Envenenada / The Poisonwood Bible'
La autora des suroeste de Estados Unidos nos trae una novela de pasión, y de tragedia con un paisaje bello e inesperado. Una selección de Oprah para su club de lectores. Un bestseller de toda clase. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Primera Detective De Botsuana'
En Botswana nunca había habido una mujer detective... hasta el día en que Mma Ramotswe decide abrir su pequeña oficina al pie del monte Kgale, cerca del desierto de Kalahari. Le basta con unas sillas, dos mesas, un teléfono y una secretaria... además de unas tazas para invitar a los clientes a tomar un té. ¿Qué otra cosa se requiere para resolver misterios? Al fin y al cabo, ¿no se han dedicado siempre las mujeres a escuchar y a intentar solucionar los problemas de los demás frente a una taza de té?
Mma Ramotswe no es una irónica intelectual ni una aguerrida ex policía, sino una mujer alegre y rolliza, cargada de sentido común y con un firme deseo de ayudar al prójimo. En su opinión, muchas personas no saben distinguir el bien del mal, y hay que enseñarles la diferencia. Huérfana, superviviente de un matrimonio infernal y madre por sólo cinco días, esta Miss Marple africana sabe reconocer el dolor ajeno, y quiere contribuir a aliviarlo. Sus métodos son tal vez poco ortodoxos, pero también lo son sus casos, así como sus atribulados clientes.
Con sus acertadas descripciones y sus sensatos comentarios, la protagonista de esta novela nos introduce paso a paso en la realidad de un país lejano y desconocido, donde la teconología convive con las tradiciones mágicas, y donde resulta más fácil conocer las noticias de boca de las vecinas que leyendo la prensa. [via]
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